and a pretty severe thunderstorm last night that took down a lot of tree branches, and in some cases, whole trees in our corner of the world. No, I sure am NOT complaining, considering all those awful midwestern storms - I figure we’re pretty lucky. Lucky, too, that as a result of the storm, it’s somewhat cooler today than it has been. We don’t have central air. One of the disadvantages, I suppose, of living in an older house, but it’s not like we have this abysmal heat year-round, after all. Over the past three/four days, though, it was pretty awful - we had to buy another AC, because the ones we brought from the old house weren’t keeping the whole apartment cool. The kitchen has a powerful ceiling fan, and we didn’t think we needed the AC in there. We were wrong. By Monday, the kitchen was uninhabitable. So yesterday, we got a new AC for the kitchen - just in time for the heat to subside today, anyway. It’s okay, though. We have more haute days ahead of us for sure.

Yellow baloons? Oh. We’re using them at a fundraising event next week - the “strategic decision” to do so was made in a meeting that I was at yesterday. I’m SO not crazy about the idea, but got outvoted. Tsk. Such inanity, I swear. Inanity - and stupidity; such decisions should not be arrived at in a democratic manner. Not when you count the votes of “kids” working here as summer interns, and “kids” working as development “associates”, which means entry-level-here-to-get-experience, right? So, in MY (considerably less than humble, I suppose) opinion, they are not sufficiently experienced to participate in this sort of decision. To baloon, or not to baloon….I mean, that’s lofty stuff. You need a meeting of the board on that one, don’t you? CEO, CFO (after, all, there IS some expense involved), etc., etc. And, hey - this meeting only took up an hour and a half of my otherwise not-terribly-busy (Riiiiiiiight) day - and it sure seems to me that to properly discuss the pros & cons, we needed at least an off-site summit of some sort…half a day, at least! But, in protest, I m spending a little work time here chatting with my bloggies. If they can keep me in a meeting about yellow baloons (Okay, and a FEW other things as well) then it’s obvious that what I am doing with my time is pretty flexible, eh? So I’m flexing.

Did I mention the heat over the past four days? Brutal, but in a nice sort of way. The weekend was pretty decent. Oh, hot (haute), yes, but enjoyable if pretty laid-back. Planted a couple of varieties of tomatoes, red & green peppers and some gladiola bulbs, watched a few movies, and then, on Sunday, went to a revolutionary war battle re-enactment over in the next town. There were encampments of British troops and patriots on either side of the town common, and we did a lot of walking around and chatting with the re-enactors, although we missed the battle which was held on Saturday while we were planting our tomatoes and such. (Good idea to plant our own, considering the salmonella scare, eh?). It was really interesting and fun, and when we left there, we went to a local beach (lake), set up our little beach chairs and soaked up a little more vitamin D before going home. Nice. Unexciting, but pleasant.

DH is going to be officially retired as of August 27, which is when he turns 62. Turns out you can file for your retirement benefits 3 months before you reach 62, so he did. As of right now, he’s still collecting unemployment benefits, and will be through July. Those of you who have known me for awhile may recall that he got fired last November from his job as a software engineer for a big hospital complex in Manchester, NH. This was after having worked there for seven years with regular rave reviews, regular peformance-based pay raises, and no indication whatsoever that they were going to fire him until a few months after his 60th birthday, when they hired a new guy - a guy in his forties - had DH *train* him, and then shortly thereafter, put DH on a 90-day “performance improvement plan”? (What?) No specific complaints, mind you, and no specific goals & objectives - just a “performance improvement” plan (or non-plan, actually). Ironically, despite there being no identified goals or objectives, they told him after 90 days that he had “satisfactorily” completed the performance improvement plan. (Huh? What did he do?) THEN, a month or so after that, he was called in by the department head (a hospital VP) and summarily fired. Needless to say, the *new guy* that he had trained now has his job. The hospital didn’t dispute DH’s unemployment claim, which they probably should have done - just to establish that they fired him for poor performance or something. But they didn’t, so it’s been documented that he was fired through no fault of his own , which leans pretty heavily in the direction of age-ism (ya THINK???). So, we filed an age-discrimination complaint, knowing that 90% of them get screened out by the Commission Against Discrimination and go nowhere. Well, guess what! They didn’t screen it out, and they sent a notice of complaint to the hospital, and the hospital has to respond by July 8. Now, DH has applied for some jobs, but let’s face, it, nobody is really going to hire a 62-year-old software engineer; not when they can get a much younger one for about half the money, right? So, he’s retiring early, which is okay, except that he’ll have to find SOMETHING to do - some kind of gainful employment - just so that he doesn’t drive himself (or me) crazy. (And so that we’ll have the money to continue with our lavish lifestyle….LOL. Not!!!!)

Eating: Truly terrible weekend, I’m afraid. Not that I ate anything outrageous - in fact, don’t have anything that qualifies as outrageous in the house, anymore. BUT, there IS such a thing as “too much of a good thing” and FOUR (yup - 4 !!!) WW Ice cream sandwiches in one day, along with your regular meals, is just plain overdoing it. I also ate a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, and while peanut butter is one of those wonderful MUFA’s that everyone is talking about nowadays, the fact remains that it has a high calorie and fat content (even if it IS of the mono-unsaturated variety!) Of course now that it’s cooler, (and we have a new AC in there) maybe I can turn my oven on again, and maybe bake some chicken and a sweet potato or something. Sweet potatoes seem to satisfy my need for something *sweet* and after having one, I don’t even need my WW ice cream sandwich.

Phyl, I don’t understand why, when I click on your name (on your comments to my blog) nothing happens. With all the others, clicking on their names takes me to their blogs. Wish I knew more about this techno-stuff, but in the meantime, I’m just watching for your blog to appear on the blog-list (which it will do whenever you post). I hope the worst of the storms passed you by. <hugs>

So, that’s about it for moi. Wishing all of you special ones (you know who you are)happy & healthy days…

Hugs,

Z